Untitled

Loose stacked blocks of color drift across a warm, pale ground, their edges softened as if the pigment were still settling. Reds, oranges, browns, yellows, and a touch of blue stretch sideways in uneven layers, each tone bleeding gently into the one beside it. This untitled oil painting was made in 1947 and is held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, having entered the collection as a gift from the Mark Rothko Foundation. Mark Rothko (1903–1970), an American artist associated with abstract expressionism, built his compositions from fields of color rather than figures or lines. Looking closely, the boundaries between the bands never form hard lines, giving the whole surface a sense of light passing through layered haze rather than solid shapes resting flat on the canvas.